Understanding the Significance of List’s "Garma"

I have tread a path which has led me to this very spot. Each step has brought me nearer and nearer to the very place where I now stand. While there was always choice, how could I do other than what I have done? The great wonder remains--have I tread this path before? 

Written between 30 July and 6 August 2023.

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Anyone who might choose to plumb the depths of the works of Guido von List (5 October 1848 – 17 May 1919), will discover several unfamiliar terms. Among these terms, coined by List, and used frequently throughout his works, is Garma. On the surface this strange word appears to be the equivalent of the Sanskrit-derived karma (“action”). Indeed, for List, there is a close etymological association between the words. Consistently, however, List chose to use Garma throughout his writings rather than karma. Stephen Flowers points out that List had no issue using the Sanskrit term Rita (“Cosmic Order”),[1] leaving readers perplexed as to why List seemingly coined his own term rather than using the more familiar karma.

To appreciate List’s reasoning, it is important to understand the influence that Helena P. Blavatsky and her book, The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy had on his thinking. Blavatsky’s Theosophist magnum opus was translated into German in 1901. While List openly refers to it in his Die Religion der Ario-Germanen in ihrer Esoterik und Esoterik (The Religion of the Aryo-Germanic Folk: Exoteric and Esoteric, 1910), it’s ideas are already in use in his 1908, Das Geheimnis der Runen (The Secret of the Runes). In Das Geheimnis der Runen, List reveals what would become an obsession for him—the idea of identifying primal words of what he referred to as “the original Aryan language.” While “Aryan” was a commonly understood and accepted term during List’s lifetime, today, in the English-speaking world, the terms “Indo-European” or “Indo-European Languages” are considered more accurate and acceptable. “Aryan” is also avoided throughout academia and elsewhere due to its use and abuses by the National Socialists throughout their reign. It is understood, and broadly accepted, that all Indo-European languages are descended from a single prehistoric language which we know as Proto-Indo-European (PIE). Scholars have reconstructed PIE and determined that it would have been spoken during the Neolithic or Early Bronze Age some 6,000 years ago.[2] Proto-Indo-European was the root-language of the entire Indo-European family including: English, German, French, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, Hindustani, Bengali, and Punjabi. List explains his theory relating the primal Germanic language back to the runes in Das Geheimnis der Runen:

“If you wish to trace the linguistic stems back to the root words of the primal Germanic language, and then follow these further back into the seed- and primal words of the original Aryan language, you must always write the stem words in runes—or at least have this means of writing in front of you. In this way you may find the correct root, and in this endeavor the name of the rune itself will be an important aid.”[3]

Here List had already transformed ideas that he encountered in The Secret Doctrine to his own. Blavatsky wrote of a “Mystery Language” from which every theology derived a common source of universal abstract beliefs. Blavatsky asserted, “…they will never remember that all the ancient records were written in a language which was universal and known to all nations alike in days of old, but which is now intelligible only to the few.”[4] Blavatsky’s “Mystery Language” was a symbolic language from a pre-historic age created by “a more advanced mankind, so much higher as to be divine in the sight of that infant humanity.”[5] In 1915, List explored, at considerable length, his own thoughts on such a primordial “Mystery Language” in his Der Ursprache der Ario-Germanen und ihre Mysteriensprache (The Primordial Language of the Aryo-Germanic Peoples and your Mystery Language).

Madame Blavatsky also presented in The Secret Doctrine, an in-depth discussion of what she called the seven root races of mankind. For Blavatsky, there will ultimately be seven such root-races of which only five have thus far come into existence—the first four having already passed from existence. She wrote that the fifth such root-race was “generally, though hardly correctly, called the Aryan race.”[6] Each of Blavatsky’s “root-races” also had seven “sub-races” and each of those had seven branches or families. With Blavatsky’s ideas in mind, List identified the runes as the symbolic Mystery Language of the ancient primal Germanic branch of the primal Aryan root-race. For List, the Rúnatáls-thattr-Ódhins of the Hávamál was the key to understand the ancient primal language as well as the original primal philosophy and Wihinei—the original universal religious principles upon which each folk derived their own variation.

List may have learned of the Indian religious concept karma from Blavatsky as well. There can be little doubt that he read her explanation of the idea. Blavatsky wrote:

“The ONE LIFE is closely related to the one law which governs the World of Being—KARMA. Exoterically, this is simply and literally “action,” or rather an “effect-producing cause.”[7]

For List, karma certainly was a later Indian evolution of the original Aryan (Indo-European) primal term. In Die Religion der Ario-Germanen in ihrer Esoterik und Esoterik he explains his term:

“Garma is destiny gar=to ferment [gähren] to be transformed into one’s self, to germinate; thus germ=the yeast (from hevan=to rise through fermentation), to weld [gärben] to be refined [gar sein], etc. ma=more, make. Garma (Sanskrit karma) = “making one’s self transform within one’s self, by means of one’s self,” i.e. one’s own commissions and omissions, as causes, generate from themselves and by means of themselves effects, and these effects constitute Garma (karma) or destiny.”[8]

List goes on to relate Garma to the Norns of Germanic mythology:

“Since there is only one ‘causeless cause,’ i.e. God, this first causeless cause as it relates to Garma or destiny is the oldest born, Urda, who has been there from the beginning [Ur]. The second Norn is evolving Garma (Verdandi) and the third Norn—the dark (not black!) one is Skuld [Schuld=debt, guilt]. If our deeds of commission and omission were good, and something which led to transformation then good credit accrues; if it was bad then debt accrues. But because this debt is only payable in the future, it is considered to be dark, or hidden, and only perceptive can lift the veil (Image of Sais) and happy is he for whom conscience—his own judge!—lifts the veil of Skuld.”[9]

Finally, List associates the term and concept back to the heathen forefathers:

“This knowledge-based faith, free of any doubt, in the self-created and self-creating Garma (destiny) which has human beings in its power, and which is no ‘blind fate,’ no ‘doom,’ was so firmly rooted in the convictions of our heathen forefathers that they referred to themselves as this with power over destiny, the ‘Garmanen,’ or ‘Germans.’”[10] List further explained in his Die Ursprache der Ario-Germanen that the name “Germans” (Germanen) was derived “From the old Aryan word: Garma, to grow out from.” He writes, “Garm-an “growing out of a cause to become a new cause, i.e. “Fate”, Sanskrit (karma) and thus ‘The men who grow out of their own fate’ or ‘The men who create fate.’ This sublime name reveals an even deeper meaning when one considers that fate itself reigns over the gods in Germanic mythology, and the knowledge of the self-created and self-fulfilled fate (without allowing a romantic forgiveness of sins through some divine or ecclesiastical treasure of grace!) was the ethical bias of Wuotanism.”[11]

While one might be tempted to disregard List’s theories as little more than a modern Theosophy- influenced invention, it is worthwhile to turn to the very mythological sources from which he refers. The mythological dog or wolf Garm (ON: Garmr) makes several notable appearances in the Eddas. Foremost are the three repetitions of this verse of the Voluspá (43, 48, and 57):

“Garm bays loudly before Gnipa cave,

Breaks his fetters and freely runs.

The fates I fathom, yet farther I see:

Of the mighty gods the engulfing doom.”[12]

The three iterations remind us of the three Norns, as does the reference to “the fates.” The association then of Garm to the fates, to the Norns, and to destiny is hardly a Listian innovation. In Snorri Sturluson’s Gylfaginning (“The Tricking of Gylfi”), Garm battles with the god Tyr during the great battle of Ragnarök:

“Then will also have got free the dog Garm, which is bound in front of Gnipahellir. This is the most evil creature. He will have a battle with Tyr and they will each be the death of the other.”[13]

What is unsatisfying with Snorri’s account, is that Tyr doesn’t battle Fenriswolf during this great conflagration, but rather the less-well-known, and less-associated with Tyr, Garm. The most important episode involving Tyr is that which tells how he placed his hand in Fenriswolf’s mouth as a pledge, thereby enabling the Aesir to bind the wolf with magic. In Snorri’s account, Fenriswolf only agrees to be bound if, “someone put his hand in my mouth as a pledge that this is done in good faith.”[14] Snorri describes the scene:

“It is one proof of his bravery that when the Aesir were luring Fenriswolf so as to get the fetter Gleipnir on him, he did not trust them that they would let him go until they placed Tyr’s hand in the wolf’s mouth as a pledge. And when the Aesir refused to let him go then he bit off the hand at the place that is now called the wolf-joint [wrist], and he is one-handed and he is not considered a promoter of settlements between people.”[15]

It is ultimately not Tyr’s long-time rival, Fenriswolf that causes his death, but rather destiny itself—in the form of Garm. Tyr sacrificed his right hand, the sword hand and the hand of pledges along with his reputation for fairness to the wolf’s great teeth. While many scholars today assert that the etymological origins of "Garm" are unclear, List’s observation of the linguistic association with destiny and the concept of karma appears quite valid from inspection of the texts themselves.

There can be little doubt that Madame Blavatsky caught List’s attention with her words, “Those who believe in Karma have to believe in destiny, which, from birth to death, every man is weaving thread by thread around himself…”[16] For List, surely Blavatsky’s metaphor stirred images of the Norns weaving fate. She continued her explanation, “When the last strand is woven, and man is seemingly enwrapped in the net-work of his own doing, then he finds himself completely under the empire of this self-made destiny.” Not unlike Blavatsky, List envisioned his Garma as a process in which one’s fate is decided through one’s own actions woven over a period of one’s life. For List, the actual definition of Garma varied very little from karma. He used it because he firmly believed Garma to be an earlier form of the word —in fact, the earliest form of the word originating from the original "Mystery Language" itself. In the primal language, Garma not only meant destiny, but was the etymological root of “Germanen” (Germanic tribes)—the sub-group that had long been List’s focus. For List, the Germanen/Garmanan were “the men who grow out of their own fate” or “the men who create fate.”[17] He believed it to be a foundational principle upon which the religion (Wihinei) of Wuotanism was founded. In Garma, List had found a key concept of the original Mystery Language and Wihinei that he sought to restore or at least explain. He understood Garma not only as a personal religious principle, but one of tremendous importance for his people as a whole—both in his own time, and in an ancient primordial past, long forgotten by most, but still discernible by those few who could unravel the secrets and mysteries of long ago.

Notes

1. Guido von List, The Transition from Wuotanism to Christianity, trans. Stephen E. Flowers (Bastrop, TX: Lodestar, 2022), 110-111.

2. J.P. Mallory, In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology and Myth (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1989), 7. 

3. Guido von List, The Secret of the Runes, trans. Stephen E. Flowers (Rochester, VT: Destiny Books, 1988), 43. 

4. Blavatsky seems to have overstated her case. Assuming the “Mystery Language,” to which she refers was what we know today as Proto-Indo-European (PIE), it is estimated that about 46% of the worlds population (3.2 billion people) speak a language that developed from it. H.P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy,Volume 1 - Cosmogenesis (Norfolk: Theosophy Trust Books, 2015), 233. 

5. Blavatsky, Vol.1, 232. 

6. Blavatsky, Vol. 2, 320. 

7. Blavatsky, Vol.1 494. 

8. List, The Religion of the Aryo-Germanic Folk: Esoteric and Exoteric, trans. Stephen E. Flowers (Bastrop, TX: Lodestar, 2014), 7.  

9. Ibid. 

10. Ibid. 

11. Guido von List, Die Ursprache der Ario-Germanen und ihre Mysteriensprache (Upper Austria Printing and Publishing, 1915) 141. 

12. Lee M. Hollander trans., The Poetic Edda (Austin, University of Texas Press, 1990), 9-11. 

13. Snorri Sturluson, Edda, trans. Anthony Faulkes (North Clarendon, VT: Everyman, 1995) 54. 

14. Ibid, 29. 

15. Ibid, 25. 

16. Blavatsky, Vol. 1, 498. 

17. Von List, Ursprache, 141.